1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to data processing systems employed in e-commerce and more particularly relates to apparatus and methods for collection of micropayments (i.e., small individual charges) for services provided to e-commerce customers.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is known in the art to offer goods and services for sale over the Internet. This approach has substantial advantages over normal “brick and mortar” retailing particularly for certain types of goods.
For example, for relatively large dollar, unique items, the Internet provides a low cost means for establishing contact between the seller and potential buyer. Typical of such activity is real estate. A potential buyer will, of course, in most instances insist upon traveling to the real estate for in person inspection before the actual contract of sale. However, the Internet, particularly with graphical and photographic display capabilities, permits a potential buyer to readily make “first level” purchasing decisions by making a determination of whether the potential purchase meets the basic requirements. It is important that such “first level” purchasing decisions can be made quickly and accurately under highly convenient and low cost conditions.
Another type of retailing situation for which the Internet offers substantial advantages is essentially “catalog” sales. In the past, such sales were made primarily by sending copies of retail catalogs to likely purchasers. Historically, Montgomery Wards, Sears, etc. participated in large volume annual sales utilizing the mail order catalog. The Internet has greatly improved this process by decreasing the catalog distribution costs and potentially increasing the availability to a larger portion of the set of potential purchasers, because any reasonable Internet user wishing to make a particular purchase can self initiate access to the on-line “catalog”. This Internet improvement continues to preserve the advantages of the previous mail order catalog process, such as low overhead costs, consolidated inventory, etc., but adds a certain responsiveness to the process. Thus, the “catalog” is not published annually, but can be modified on a minute to minute basis to accommodate newly available goods, changes to pricing strategy, etc.
A third type of sale, “micro-sale”, has the potential for large future dollar volumes. Such micro-sales are characterized by extremely low individual purchase prices. Typically, this may be less than one U.S. dollar per purchase. Oftentimes, the goods or services can be directly delivered over the Internet. The playing of a recording, performance of a specialized search, etc. are representative of goods and services suitable for micro-sale.
The major difficulty with a micro-sale is the cost of collecting the corresponding “micro-payment”. For payments of less than several dollars, traditional payment credit card, debit card, invoice and corresponding personal check, are simply too expensive to permit cost effective micro-sales. Subscription services wherein the user prepays for content unnecessarily constrains the user to limited future purchases.